https://www.flickr.com/photos/janitors/10576017753
Chitika Insights has a produced a report that shows the traffic share of different smartphone makers across both apps and the mobile web in North America. The iPhone is the leader in both categories, though somewhat surprisingly, its share of traffic is greater on the mobile web than in the world of apps.
Chitika drew upon two sets of data for the report: half a billion mobile exchange impressions through the company’s Cidewalk platform (for app traffic) and millions of ad impressions from the Chitika Ad Network (for mobile web traffic) from earlier this month.
Collectively, Android devices generate roughly 54 percent of app-based internet traffic in North America. However they only generate 47.5 percent on the mobile web, compared with the iPhone’s 52.5 percent. The gap between the iPhone and Samsung devices is roughly 20 points in each case.
One might expect Android devices, with Google search so prominently featured, to collectively drive a higher percentage of mobile web traffic. Correspondingly one would expect the iPhone’s traffic to be more concentrated in apps.
Here’s how Chitika seeks to explain the finding:
It’s likely that Apple users, in aggregate, are simply more likely to use their browser throughout the course of a given day. Safari has regularly earned praise for its functionality on mobile, and, perhaps more importantly, Apple makes it the default browser for any link clicked on an iOS device. This familiarity may predispose iPhone users to more often trust in their browser when performing tasks, as opposed to finding and using an associated app.
I’m not as sure but have no alternative explanation.
Compare actual traffic data above vs. comScore survey based data on US smartphone marketshare for October 2014. Even more removed from “the facts on the ground” are the shipments data used by firms such as IDC and Gartner to do their market share estimates and projections.
It may not be “statistically kosher” to do this but a blending of the two Chitika data sets shows that the iPhone drives roughly half of mobile internet traffic across both apps and the mobile web.
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